According to the prior art, despatch units are formed from printed products, such as newspapers and magazines, by a process in which the printed products delivered in scale formation form are stacked, packed in packing paper or sheeting and then tied to form packs or bales. The apparatus used for this purpose are designed in such a way that the packs have a standardized, maximum size or smaller and that despatch units exceeding the maximum pack size comprise two or more independent packs (standard packs and small packs). If such despatch units comprising several packs are formed by parallel-working machines with optimum utilization, it is not simple to eject in directly succeeding or juxtaposed manner the individual packs which belong to a despatch unit, e.g. having the same address, so that they are usually accumulated and the packs with the same address are sorted out later.
According to a more recent development, flat products and in particular printed products are packed into tubular packs instead of into packs containing stacked products. One method and an apparatus for producing such tubular packs are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,101,610, Honegger. A scale formation of printed products of a given length are wound onto a mandrel. During the same winding process the tubular roll can be provided with an address sheet, enveloped with a protective sleeve, e.g. formed from a plastics sheet or strong paper, and/or can be bound with string or plastic tape. The finished, tubular pack is then ejected from the winding mandrel in the axial direction.
During the production of tubular packs it is also advantageous to limit the pack size. Thus, when there are large despatch units, it is desirable to produce several tubular packs each having a diameter which is equal to or smaller than a standardized maximum value.